Are Trolls Just Playing a Different Game Than the Rest of Us? | Big Think

Trolling is certainly the, uh, topic of the year. If we were having this conversation in 1995, for one thing, the screen would be about 1/16th the size, and, uh, the video quality would be much poorer. But it would be a very standard configuration. The story would be, "Hey, there's now an internet. People can say anything. Sometimes it gets a little out of control, and maybe the government will come in and try to regulate in some way." But it's basically the government trying to stop illegal or really extreme things from happening, and otherwise, it's just a free-for-all out there.

Um, away we go. Fast forward 10, 15, 20 years, and we see an environment now in which many, many people want to participate, maybe have views they want to share. If you stick your head up out of the gopher hole and happen to say something intemperate or wrong or that others may disapprove of, they might not just say, "Gee, I disagree. Let's talk about this," or something. They may decide to try to dox you, find out where you live, the names of the rest of your family, to threaten you with the goal of making you feel insecure. They might try to swat you, tell the police that there's something terrible going on in your house, and before you know it, there's blue and red lights outside your window and people ready to kick in the door.

This is a strange state of affairs, and it's one I think has multiple causes and that actually is susceptible to pretty sustained study, most of which hasn't happened yet. In the next few years, I think it will. That says what makes people want to react that way. My best cut on it at the most abstract level is that when we are online, we may be undertaking very different activities than the people that we're talking to. One model for being online is, "I'm entertaining myself. I'm having fun. I am, in some form or another, playing a game." And if that's the case, playing the game means picking a side, and that's a very different model from, "I'm online because I really believe earnestly in something and I want to convince you of why I'm right," or "have you maybe convince me," or "find people who are of like mind and we can talk about strategizing about the thing that we really care about."

Those are totally different activities, and when you try to mix the two, it's almost like saying if there's going to be a discussion between Seattle Seahawk fans and New England Patriots fans ahead of a Super Bowl, "Can't we just settle this with a discussion? Like, can't we just earnestly air our differences and come to some compromise that the Patriots should win but only by five points?" Like, that's nuts. The purpose of the conversation is sort of just the chest-thumping that comes from the play of being a fan of a team and trash-talking the other team. And then, you know, you play the game.

I think that for a lot of trolling, there's a sense that it's just nothing personal. We're just out to have some fun. Others have referred to this as 4chan culture, and, uh, of course named after the site 4chan, for which this is, uh, largely the culture. Figuring out, I think, how to have people avoid category errors, um, might be a good way to relieve a little bit the initial conditions that give rise to a situation that you fast forward, and somehow death or rape threats are being made, personal information is getting scattered everywhere, and the parties behind it still are just like, "Think it's no big deal." Like, they just go to sleep at night, and tomorrow they'll find a new cause to get involved in.

I imagine we will also see some of these intermediary platforms that are commonly used for many purposes, like Twitter. They're going to start taking a heavier hand at intervening when discussions get rough, and it might be as simple as, uh, being more willing to delete accounts. Which, let's be clear, that's going to mean that others will be more willing to try to importune Twitter to delete accounts as part of the battle, uh, between people who are arguing about something. Over the longer term, I think we may see coming into view something that's been promised for a while, and, uh, be careful what you ask for. I think we're going to get it...